Wednesday, 23 January 2013

DIY: Leather Clutch Bag (for £3, maadness)

So every DIY post I do, I've vowed to do for less than a fiver! And that is what I shall do.

So if you're all about saving the pennies, then this not only will help, but will give you somewhere to put them too!

I've been loving basic-simple items recently, and the beautiful DIY projects from Love Aesthetics (a truly beautiful blog) are really inspiring me to get creative. Have a look at a few of her amaazing ideas:

So I found a nice large piece of black leather in a charity shop whilst I was working in Walton on Thames for £2!! So naturally I had to think up something interesting to do with it & I decided to make myself a clutch bag, and here's how!

You'll need:

* To save money, I bought this naff make-up bag for £1 from Poundland & took the zip off, because zips bought from craft shops can be a bit pricey! And it meant I had a template to work with!!

Using chalk, draw around your template, or mark out an area big enough on the back of your fabric, leaving a 1cm edge to sew the seam. Then cut the fabric, following the lines you've drawn.

Fold the fabric in half so that the inside of the bag is on the outside (Hopefully this does make sense!)

Pin the fabric where you want to sew the seam. Make sure the line is nice & straight, as this is your guideline.

If you have a sewing machine, this will take you 5 minutes. But if like me, you try to avoid the things like the plague then a needle & thread will do fine!

Next, pinch each corner and turn the bag inside out, so it's the right way!

Once you've done this & flipped it the right way, you'll need to attach the zip! This was the hardest part I found, mainly because I ran out of black thread & impatiently swapped to a red wine coloured one! But managed to hide it thankfully.

Once you've sewn one side of the zip on, it should look like this! Do the same on the other side, stitching the seam about half the way in on the zip itself.

So once you've done that, and neatened it all up a bit, it should look something like this! You could spend a bit more on a nicer zip if you wanted, a chunky metal one would be nice too. And you can use any fabric you want, I just liked the simplicity of black leather. And now I've got a bag to match my watch, as they were both made from the same piece of leather (:

There you have it, £3! BARGAAAIN

*Apologies for the inconsistent lighting, I made this over the course of a few days at Lil's house as well as mine.

Have you got any interesting DIY ideas you've done? Or anything you'd like me to do perhaps?

You can even challenge me if you like, to make something, but to keep it under a fiver!